An attempted antidote to the More Means Worse argument used in higher education

The universities who never made the batting order.

It was a distinctive phase in the history of British Higher Education. The UGC had planned for expansion after the Second World War through growing existing universities and university colleges. Many of these had retrenched during the 1930s (and certainly during the war) so there was capacity. Other forms of higher education also expanded, with many new teacher training colleges and new routes in technical colleges.

The UGC received proposals for new universities but only acceded to one, the University College of North Staffordshire under the persuasive leadership of A D Lindsay which opened at Keele in 1949. Through the 1950s civic university colleges grew to a size and maturity that they could be granted University title; when Leicester got its title in 1957 that process was complete. The UGC agreed to another new university college, at Brighton, and invented a sponsorship model that would allow innovation. It also agreed that there should be more new universities, and so a very strange competition was started.

The UGC accepted bids for new universities. They established a new universities sub-committee and this set out sorting out a batting order of existing bids and evaluating new ones. This is well covered in histories of the UGC and in the accounts (sometimes heroic) of the universities that were born from this episode in British HE history. However, more evocative are the untold stories, of the universities that never happened, whose files remain as a testament to the optimism of local promotion committees who tried to get a new university.

The Team List

The UGC file contains two different lists of those bids they received, which I have collated, together with other known examples from their files.

Potential University

First knowledge of application

Blackpool

Brighton

November 1946

Bournemouth

October 1959

Bury St Edmunds

July 1947

Canterbury

September 1947

Carlisle

February 1947

Chatham

March 1958

Chester

December 1960

Cleveland

June 1956

Cornwall

March 1963

Coventry

February 1955

Cumberland & Westmorland

June 1961

Folkestone

March 1958

Glastonbury

Gloucestershire (Cheltenham)

February 1959

Guildford

January 1962

Hereford

August 1958

Isle of Man

December 1958

Lancaster

April 1947

Llandrindod Wells

January 1962

North Wales

February 1960

Norwich

June 1946

Plymouth

December 1960

Salisbury

September 1946

Stamford

January 1960

Stevenage

September 1959

Tees-side

April 1963

Thanet

January 1959

Whitby

August 1959

Wiltshire (Swindon)

May 1961

York

February 1947

The UGC had considerable latitude in how it went about the process, with the sub-committee considering applications on their merits, with the UGC Chairman, Sir Keith Murray, setting the tone of discussions. At its meeting in October 1957 it noted the actively promoted proposals were Coventry, Gloucester/Cheltenham, Norwich, Thanet and York

The UGC still reported to the Treasury but was in communication with the DES. There were considerations from the part of the HE sector that DES controlled. So, for example, Dame Mary Smieton, the Permanent Secretary, wrote a helpful commentary on some of the leading contenders:

We are frankly rather surprised that the Cheltenham/Gloucester proposal is not making more headway. … So far as technology is concerned … we should be embarrassed by any proposal to develop university courses in technology in the Cheltenham/Gloucester area until the Bristol CAT [now Bath] has reached the limit of reasonable expansion, and that time is not yet in sight.

Time was of the essence. In effect, the batting order was driven by a set of criteria; focused on local support, including access to land and other amenities. The UGC also had an informal spatial plan, it was clear that they would not be placing two new universities in the same area. When York was approved, that knocked Whitby out. Blackpool’s chances declined as Lancaster firmed up its offering. Stamford had prepared a detailed bid, but other Lincolnshire towns became interested. A file note records the visit of the Town Clerk of Grantham.

Mr Guile said that interest in a possible University in Grantham had started up … when they heard that people were interesting themselves in the Stamford project. …Developing the case for a University at Grantham, if there were to be one in that part of the world at all, they said:-(1) While Grantham would not pretend to have the history and background of Stamford, it probably had a more lively culture at present and it certainly was more of an industrial centre.(2) It was two-and-a-half times as large as Stamford and might therefore be able better to cope with the lodgings question. …

UGC File Note: Grantham 28 April 1961 UGC 7/235 TNA

Stamford had been suggested as a site by its local MP on the grounds of both its historical links with Oxford and Cambridge and the opportunities afforded by its new bypass. Despite producing a formal submission, Stamford did not get approval before the scheme closed.

UGC 7/235 TNA

Each of the files contains the stories of the bids: The Isle of Man gamely hoping that the UK government would fund a university there despite them being outside the fiscal system; the hope that a university city of Avalon would be built next to Glastonbury; the note that Wolverhampton has good sporting facilities and a strongly supported football team; and the prospect of 300,000 beds being available for students if a university were to be in Blackpool. The files contain limited signs of consultation with communities, but someone was moved to write to the UGC about Blackpool:

I beg to strongly oppose the current suggestion that a university for the North West of England should be established at, or on the outskirts of, Blackpool.A university is supposed to be a place where young people absorb culture and learning not spivvery and paganism.

The rest of the correspondence is charming. Notes from the sub-committee members record the emerging picture, particularly as the bids come thick and fast. Indeed the UGC adopted a proforma letter to reply to enquiries from local authorities. By March 1961 the second tranche of proposals are agreed with the Treasury.

As hinted, the appointment of the Robbins Committee stalls developments. Once its report is published and the government changes, the situation is clear. The Town Clerk of Swindon hadn’t been that enthusiastic to start; his first submission notes that the council’s first task is to overcome the “widespread impression of Swindon as a drab and dreary town” such that it was not desired that the name of a university founded at Swindon should include the name Swindon, but rather be the University of Wessex. He keeps up a cheerful correspondence with the UGC over the next four years, worrying whether Bournemouth was getting ahead etc. In February 1965 he keeps the UGC informed of the prospects for a university.

UGC 7/251

It was too late. Copleston replied to say that he hadn’t tossed the letter in the waste-basket, that he hadn’t groaned, but he did hold off replying until the new Secretary of State had made this announcement:

On the question of new universities, the Government have considered the advice given by the University Grants Committee, and it is now clear that the target of 218,000 university places in 1973–74 is within the capacity of existing universities and other institutions of university status. … the Government have decided that no more additional universities or accessions to university status will be needed for about 10 years …

Crossland, A, 1965 Statement on Higher Education, Hansard 24 February

At this point, the new university process ended. The UGC wrote to all the supporters, even those in abeyance, to say there was nothing further it could do about the proposals.

‘Why should we not aim at … a vocationally orientated non-university sector which is degree-giving and with appropriate amount of postgraduate work with opportunities for learning comparable with those of the universities, and giving a first class professional training … let us move away from our snobbish caste-ridden hierarchical obsession with university status’

Crosland, A,1965, Woolwich Polytechnic Speech

From this would come the affirmation of the binary system and the creation of Polytechnics. Some of those authorities who wanted their technical colleges upgraded would get a Polytechnic instead. Some, such as Hereford, Glastonbury, Stamford and Salisbury, are still waiting.

References:The National Archives have the UGC files, Series UGC7 containing the sub-committee, its minutes and the individual files kept on each bid.